Expanding The Tent
Capitalism
The neighborhood was wrong.
Chloe’s canvassing app had routed her through the 3rd precinct’s ghost, a gauntlet of payday lenders, boarded-up diners, and skeletal warehouses. The air had tasted like defeat.
Then she crossed Division Street, and the world inverted.
The road became new blacktop. The sidewalks were clean, lined with newly-planted trees still in their support stakes. The houses were aggressively, uniformly new, the sod on the lawns so fresh she could see the seams. It smelled of wet paint and industrial quantities of mulch.
This was River’s Bend, the OmniTech development. It was a planned community built on the ruins of the old one. Chloe adjusted the strap of her canvas bag, her skin crawling. This wasn’t revitalization; it was a sterile, plastic facade. It was the Potemkin village the company built to mask its plunder. She steeled herself. The people here weren’t collaborators, she reassured herself; they were the first wave of victims, trapped in a gilded cage.
And she was going to free them.
A man holding a toddler opened the door of a muted-gray colonial upon her knock.
A man in his late thirties answered, holding a crying toddler on his hip. He looked tired but content, wearing a soft polo shirt with a small, discreet logo she did not recognize.
“Hi there,” Chloe started, flashing her most practiced, disarming smile. “My name is Chloe, and I’m a volunteer with the Senator Reeves campaign. We’re just out talking to voters about the issues that matter most to them. Do you have a minute?”
“Sure,” the man said, shifting the child to his other side. “Sarah, I’ve got it.”
A woman’s voice called from inside, and a moment later she appeared, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. She had the same look as her husband: comfortable, settled.
“We’re Mark and Sarah,” the woman said, smiling. “Sorry, Leo is teething.”
“No problem at all,” Chloe said, pulling a pamphlet from her bag. “As you know, the election is just a few weeks away, and Senator Reeves is really focused on building an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top.”
Mark nodded slowly. “We’ve seen his ads. What’s his plan for the healthcare exchange? Our premiums just went up again.”
“I’m so glad you asked,” Chloe said, feeling herself hit her stride. This was familiar territory. “He’s a strong supporter of adding a public option, to create real competition and force insurance companies to lower their costs.”
“A public option,” Sarah mused. “Like Medicare for everyone?”
“Not quite that far,” Chloe admitted, “but it’s a step toward reining in the insurance industry. The Senator believes healthcare is a right, not a privilege.”
“Good,” Mark said, his nod more decisive this time. “We agree.”
“And he plans to fund these programs,” Chloe continued, moving toward her core message, the one that always resonated in these struggling districts, “by finally, finally making the megacorporations that gutted these communities pay their fair share.”
She waited for the appreciative nods, the assumed murmurs of agreement.
Instead, silence.
“Gutted?” the man, Mark, asked. His voice was quiet.
“Well, yes,” Chloe said, gesturing to the world outside their door. “Companies that move jobs overseas, that don’t pay their fair share, that...”
“You mean OmniTech?” Sarah asked. She pointed, not at the horizon, but at the polo shirt Mark was wearing. Chloe saw it now: a small, subtle logo on the sleeve.
“I mean, companies like them,” Chloe said, her voice tightening. She could see the campus from here, a colossal fortress of smoked glass and white steel dominating the skyline. It was the enemy, right there, gleaming in the sun.
“OmniTech built this house,” Sarah said. Her voice was flat, devoid of the anger Chloe expected. “My dad worked at the old axle plant down the street. When it closed, he lost his pension. He died in a rented house that smelled like mildew. That was abandonment.”
Sarah stepped onto the porch. “I work in HR at that ‘fortress.’ Mark is a logistics manager. This house, the car in the driveway, our son’s college fund... that’s OmniTech.”
Chloe’s mind raced, trying to file this. Corporate Stockholm syndrome, she thought. They’ve been brainwashed.
“But the system is the problem,” she insisted, her voice rising with the passion of her conviction. “They’re exploiting you. They’ve just made the exploitation comfortable.”
“Let me make this easy for you: we already voted,” Sarah interrupted. “For Reeves.”
Chloe froze. The words did not compute. “You... what?”
“We mailed our ballots last week,” Mark confirmed, shifting the now-sleeping toddler.
“But... you just said... OmniTech...”
“You’re not listening,” Mark said, his tone one of mild frustration. “OmniTech is an engine of growth. It’s the most powerful, efficient thing I’ve ever seen. You don’t burn the engine to the ground. You put a governor on it. You make sure it powers the whole damn city, not just the CEO’s yacht.”
“We’re voting for Reeves because of OmniTech,” Sarah said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “My CEO made two hundred million dollars last year. I know, I process the paperwork. Reeves is the only one talking about taxing capital gains like regular income. That man’s tax rate should be astronomical. He should be delighted to fund our hospitals and roads. But to do that, OmniTech needs our support.”
Chloe stood on the pristine welcome mat, her entire ideology crashing like a bad server. She had come here to fight the dragon, only to find the villagers harnessing it.
They weren’t victims. They weren’t brainwashed. They were... pragmatic. They had looked the beast in the eye and decided not to slay it, but to tax it.
“It was nice to meet you, Chloe,” Sarah said, her smile returning, polite and dismissive.
The heavy door clicked shut.
Chloe was alone on the porch. The air smelled of fertilizer. She looked down at her pamphlet, its bold headline: A FAIR SHOT FOR WORKING FAMILIES.
She looked up at the OmniTech campus. Her map of the world, the one with the clear lines between good and evil, oppressor and oppressed, was useless here. The pamphlet in her hand felt like a relic from a different war.